There are monsters in your closet, creeping in on you while you are sleeping. They’re coming from under the bed, and they’re creeping, creeping up on you, while you’re asleep. They’re coming from the ceiling, the walls, the windows, they’re everywhere. And you’re. Still. Sleeping.

Labels: Halloween, Stories

{Like all stories here at A Storied Year, this one is meant to stand on its own. But if you're interested in the further (previous) adventures of Bobby Larenzo, you can find them here, in descending order.}

Bobby Larenzo, once Miami’s most infamous hitman, had been in retirement for five years already, and had allowed himself to believe that he’d never have to kill another man. Bobby’s legendary speed, strength, and accuracy had left him by now, a fact his former associates and their competition were ignorant of; it was this ignorance which provided him with his security. He knew they were all too scared of him to ever try and come after him. The cocky son of a bitch didn’t even move, because his son was in eighth grade, and he wanted him to finish middle school and high school before he and his wife lifted roots.

But somebody decided to test Bobby, something that had never gone well for anyone. This person kidnapped Bobby Junior as he was leaving high school, where he was now a senior. A messenger delivered a note to the Larenzo household, with an address on it. Ten minutes later, Bobby was kicking in the door of The Hamilton’s room 435, and noting with trepidation that it had taken two kicks. Tommy Cabron, that slice of shit, was on the opposite side of the room, standing behind Bobby’s son, holding a knife to his neck. Bobby’s boy looked nervous, but okay. Bobby knew he hadn’t told Tommy that his skills were in decline. He knew that because Tommy Cabron was sweating. The arrogant bastard hadn’t even brought any other men.

“Let my boy go, Tommy. Let’s do this right, if we’re doing it.”

“So it’s true, Larenzo. You aren’t what you used to be.”

“And why do you think that, Cabron?”

“Because if you were, you’d have killed me already.” He flung Bobby Junior’s chair over, and rushed Bobby, pointing the knife at him, his face deranged. Bobby broke his knife arm, with a weak crunch that gave him no satisfaction. Tommy still managed to cut him between two ribs, deep. He went for a gun, but Bobby gave him a straight across the jaw that put him on the ground. He climbed on top of him, not thinking, just acting. He grabbed Cabron’s throat and squeezed as hard as he could. Tommy gurgled and spat, while Bobby watched and held tight, disgusted by the noises he was making. Then it was over, and he and his boy were safe, and Bobby decided to uproot the family after all. All those years of killing, and he realized that he’d never felt like a murderer before. He’d never gone home with the spittle of a man’s last breath on his cheek.

Labels: Stories

You may have noticed that there was a picture accompanying today's story; if not, you must not have looked very hard, because the picture is at the top, and of a decent size. Anyway, my good friend Conor, who is one of the best short story writers I know and has enormous hands, is having a short story contest hosted through his blog, which is linked above in his name, and in the links bar on his right. The contest, basically, is to take the Gorilla World image and write a short story inspired by it, or attempting to explain it. Stories must be at least 50 words long, and are due by the end of October. Grand prize is, I believe, lunch. Or, if you want to break it up, he'd probably buy you five milkshakes; fair is fair.

Anyway, anyone with a spare ten minutes who fancies themselves a writer might as well enter, on account of it's a funny, fun contest, and I know for a fact that Conor is a lonely, hollow, shell of a man right now, so he'd probably appreciate the attention.

Here's the link to the contest page:

Conor's Contest!

Labels: Generalness

Once, there was a crooked man, and a very, very straight-backed gorilla. They spent that majority of their time in adjoining habitats, the man working in the office that oversaw the renowned Gorilla World park, where the gorilla worked from nine to five, Monday through Friday. The man, who had suffered a severe case of forward-leaning scoliosis since childbirth, was the worst worker in the office, remaining employed only because he was the nephew of Gorilla World’s owner. His twisted spine made him unable to sit still for more than a minute, and his fat, hairy, Slavic knuckles made it difficult for him to perform such delicate-but-necessary office tasks as dialing the telephone, typing on a computer, or fetching scones. The gorilla, on the other hand, was such a perfect picture of straight, erect posture that it would have made the collective Queens of England blush. He couldn’t knuckle-run because of it, making him far slower than the other gorillas, and climbing trees was a nearly impossible task for someone who couldn’t lean around the trunk properly. Both man and gorilla were resoundingly mocked by their cohabitants, and neither found acceptance in their respective societies.

Making matters worse was that they passed each other on their way to work each morning, the very presence of their opposite mocking their ambiguous physiologies. The gorilla would park his Ford Taurus and step gracefully out, while the man typically toppled from his raised truck. The man would stare up at the gorilla, who looked down at him over his long, thin, aristocratic nose. They both feigned scorn, while flames of jealousy burned within.

After several years of abuse and ridicule, the man decided to try and switch places with the gorilla. Such an idea had never been proposed, but still, there was surprisingly little paperwork involved, especially given the number of times he’d been told by his boss, “You’re so stupid, one of those gorillas could do your job. In fact, I wish desperately that we could switch you with one.” So in time, with help from the man’s uncle, the paperwork went through, and the crooked man switched places with the straight-backed gorilla.

Almost immediately, the man found himself right at home, shimmying up and down the jungle trees, participating in the annual deposing of the alpha gorilla, laying with his gorilla mistress and gorilla man and gorilla wife. He found the peace he’d been searching for his whole crooked-backed life. The gorilla, on the other hand, did not fare so well. All of his new co-workers mocked his hairy body and large head, and hounded him constantly with jeers about the fact that gorillas have the smallest proportionate penises of any mammal. Gorilla was sad. After spending his whole life trying to fit in, it turned out he was just too manly for the gorillas, and not manly enough for the men.

Labels: Stories

He looked and felt stereotypical, standing there in his ripped thrift-store jeans, an army-green shirt, wearing his denim beret and his sense of indignance. He hadn’t wanted to come to this protest, but he had badly wanted to impress his girlfriend; the latter desire, as usual, demolished the first. The white-skinned, white-collar businessmen employed by the conglomerate they were picketing walked between them, casting dirty looks and aspersions to either side. His girlfriend and her comrades-in-signs threw curse words and furious spittle back at them, but it was all he could do to manage an angry-looking squint.

Yes, he thought the distribution of unsafe medical products manufactured by the conglomerate in war-torn countries was truly horrible, but he wasn’t under the illusion that these workers had much to do with it. They just came to work, Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, and then went home, leaving their work at their work. Yes, he knew they were boring, were fat and getting fatter, and he knew their lives were probably pegged down to some routine they performed every day. But as he watched them arrive from their upper-middle class homes, he wondered if maybe he didn’t hate that as much as he wanted to. He wondered, “Is there really anything wrong with finding one day that you can live with, and trying to live it over and over again? Is there?”

Labels: Stories

“Hey. Hey! You, man, I’m talking to you. You look familiar…are you on television? Yeah? That’s right! You’re that anchor guy, on FOX. This is perfect, man, I’ve got some things I need to tell you, things that the people need to know. Yeah, I know what I look like, but I’m not just some crazy homeless guy, okay, man? I used to work for NASA. I know things. You need to go on the air tonight and tell the people what’s going on. Tell them that their government is working on new diseases every day, not to drop on some other country, man, but to give to us. It keeps the pharmaceutical companies pumping in billions and billions of dollars every year man. Why do you think we’ve been getting sicker over the last fifty years? You’re not one of those thumb-assed idiots who think AIDS came from a guy fucking a monkey, are you?

“But that’s not even the half of it, man. That’s the shit any decent reporter with a few good contacts and some luck could figure out. But I’ve been having these dreams, man, about all the other shit going on. Like pizza, man. Pizza was actually created by the devil. ‘Pizza’ is actually Italian for ‘Satan’s Bread.’ Even your feet, man! They got to your feet. Evolutionarily, humans aren’t supposed to have toes, did you know that? Not many people do, it’s okay. Toes are attached to us at birth, to transmit preference signals to advertisers. That’s why you never see anyone barefoot in photos before 1950, when they started doing it, even though shoes weren’t invented until 1945. They Photoshop the pictures. See this? That’s why I cut mine off, man. You can’t let them get into your head. Do anything to keep them out of your head.”

Labels: Stories

Yesterday was, most certainly, one of those days. It was Shar's first day back to work after we had one glorious month off together, and my first day back to writing full time. And full time is not an exaggeration this go around; I usually get a fair amount done, but never enough to make me feel like I was pulling my weight, and not enough for me to feel comfortable not getting at least a part time job. So I decided to make a go of it, and start putting in 40-hour work weeks, putting time in on one of three partially-completed books, various freelance odd jobs, a project I'm working on with Dan, or (of course) this blog.

So yesterday I was excited. I was sad Shar was leaving, but glad to get going on the next stage of my career. And then Shar's car wouldn't start, at 8:30 in the morning, as I was sitting down to start. So I did the lengthy round trip to drop her off, and then picked my mom up and called a tow truck. Four hours later, I had a few hours to myself, to try and squeeze some work out. Then it was off to pick up my mom again, and then get Shar's car, and then drive down to pick her up from work. In between, my car's iPod cable broke, I found out State Farm is holding me liable for the accident I was in (that, to reiterate, wasn't my fault), and I stubbed my toe.

Anyway, it was a frustrating day, to say the least, that at least ended well with some of our best buddies over to watch Monday Night Football on our ridiculously nice television. Plus I'm listening to Feist right now as I'm working and having one of those extremely pleasant "Why the hell haven't I been listening to this person for longer?" experiences. Anyway, we're officially back and running, and I will actually be posting pictures and recollections of pre-wedding events now, if only because it will be a fun way to take a break every day.

Labels: Generalness

There is very little mystery surrounding the formation of clouds. Everyone knows how it happens. What we see as a big, puffy cloud, is in fact just a massive collection of little water and ice particles. They form when rising warm air expands and cools; as cool air cannot hold as much water, some of that vapor condenses around tiny particles of dust. Billions of these particles come together to create a densely packed cloud. The clouds appear white because they reflect the light of the sun; when they’re grey, it’s because they are too dense to allow all the light through.

But can anyone tell me what any of that has to do with the moment your plane crests a marine layer, and the grey sky turns blue? When looking around, all you see is the white, soft tops of those billions and billions of water particles clinging to dust particles, and they look thick enough to run across? Or why we call them nimbostratus and cumulus clouds when clearly what they are is a set of stairs and a school bus?

Labels: Stories

“You see, Clarita, grades are the most important part of high school. Without good grades, you won’t get into a good college, and without a good college, it’ll be hard to get a good job.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Rosso, but that’s complete and utter stupidity. There isn’t a single thing about high school that’s important, least of all grades. If you look at our culture, the people who’ve gotten successful on the merit of their own abilities usually don’t come from an Ivy League school, Mr. Rosso. They come from places that want you to work from the heart, to become something other than just one more Yale clone.”

***

“Honey, I know it’s hard to see, but trust me, once you get to college, none of this will matter.”

“What the shit kind of advice is that? No offense, Mom, but what do I care if it won’t matter in three years? I’m a sophomore, and if this is how life is going to be for the next three years, what? I’m supposed to be okay with that because the four years after that will be better? I can’t just not care about my life, and right now, my shitty life is shitty high school.”

***

“Clarita, just lighten up. You have to live with no regrets. Just like, free, you know?”

“No regrets? You mean like be totally happy with every decision I’ve ever made and everything that’s ever happened to me? What are you, a marshmallow?”

Labels: Stories

Linda was mad at her mom for making her wear that stupid skirt, so she kicked a rock on her way to school. That afternoon, little Ricky was riding his bike and caught his front wheel awkwardly on the rock, flipping over the front of his handlebars in the middle of the street. A mysterious stranger almost ran into him with his car, but stopped just in time to save the unconscious boy’s life. The mysterious stranger called for help, and a single woman who lived in the house nearby called an ambulance, then stayed with the boy and the mysterious stranger until they came. Afterward, she invited him in and made him some tea. And now, their relationship is the stuff of legends, the famous movie star and his plain Jane wife, tearing up Tinseltown with their outlandish antics, giving money to young couples in love, paying for vacations for nice guys who’ve always finished last. And to think, if Linda hadn’t had to wear that stupid skirt, there would’ve been nothing to write about today.

Labels: Stories

She ordered a Long Island Iced Tea, and he ordered a Coke, and they both wanted steaks. When Rick the waiter nodded and wrote down their order, he heard the woman’s breath squeak out a little, and he caught quite a dirty look from the husband. Rick cursed himself in his head. He hadn’t asked her for I.D. He hadn’t asked because she looked 40, but he could tell from how hurt the woman looked that it was the first time she hadn’t been carded, and now she was going to whine to the husband about it for the rest of the night. He could tell from the way they were dressed and how excited they’d been when he stepped up that this was their nice night out, one they took maybe once a month. Which mean that the husband had been playing smooth all night because this was the one night a month he was guaranteed sex (barring an absentminded waiter, of course). And they looked like the type where the man paid, which meant Rick had just assed himself out of any kind of tip. Which meant Rick, still in high school, was another night’s waiting tables away from buying the used car he wanted, which meant he was another day away from being able to ask Carolina out, which meant he was yet another day away from having sex with her.

He cursed the ravages of time and what they’d done to the woman in front of him, then shot an apologetic look at her husband, trying to throw a twist of “What do you want me to do?” in there as well. He tried to convey that he sympathized, really. He tried to convey that he was just another horny male, walking on eggshells and slipping on the banana peels underneath.

Labels: Stories

He’d been walking since the skies had been clear, over a day ago. He hadn’t stopped, not to rest his legs, eat, or go to the bathroom. He wasn’t feeling bad, either; he was taking his time, enjoying the weather. He was coming from a paradise, too terrible to describe, where the sun was always hanging overhead and the people were always smiling. It all got to be a bit much for him, so he’d set out walking, determined to keep walking until he hurt. It hadn’t taken long for the blisters to form, along with a glistening smile.

Not long after that the grey blanket had spread itself over the sky, and not long after that it started pouring rain, slicking the mud beneath his feet. Every step was harder to take, more and more mud caking to his thin, ill-fitting boots. In between the suck of his boots pulling out of the ground, he soaked in the pitter-pat of the rain, the chaos of all those little droplets exploding on the ground around him. The muffled light of the sun was slipping lower and lower behind the clouds, and that just made him smile wider. He preferred the dark.

Labels: Stories

Everything is so dark. I’m pretty sure I’m dead. Yeah, I was in the restaurant, and I was eating steak too quickly, and my wife made a joke and I laughed and the steak got stuck, and the edges started going black, and now it’s all black. But it feels like I’m moving. Moving where? Forward, I think. Moving towards something else. And then I open my eyes, and it’s so bright. It’s so clear. I wish you could see it, Cynthia, I do.

Labels: Stories

So I was in this restaurant bathroom, and they were playing just the worst music. It was all faux R&B that was neither rhythmic nor bluesy (unless “Put It in Your Butt” is some kind of coded lamentation that’s just soaring over my head), and then all faux Country shit that had nothing to do with any country I’ve ever lived in. And so, hey, what would you do? I finished up and two-stepped it out to the beach, and it was just pink and red sunburned white people everywhere, feelin’ blue. They were waiting for the show to start.

So then these jets fly by, right, real low and loud, soundin’ like a stampede of gods, the vibrations just jumpin’ up and down in your guts. And I hit the ground, man, and I hit it hard: I thought it was the apocalypse! But then I see the jets go by, all red white and blue, and I see the crowds on the beach are cheering, and I realize: they think this was supposed to happen. The planes go by again and again and again and they keep cheering, while the dogs and the toddlers go nuts with crying, and I’m thinking, hey, they’ve got the right idea. What are we cheering here, that we can watch a billion dollars fly overhead and shower exhaust on us, or the fact that when we bomb them to hell, they’re terrified beforehand by that awful awful awful noise?

But then the jets go by again, lower and louder than goddamn ever, and I see this old lady waving hello to them as they pass over her, but to me she doesn’t look like she’s waving hello, she looks like she’s begging them not to come by again, begging them not to bomb us, or suck the gold from our pockets and teeth. It looks like she’s the only one who understands what’s happening here.

Labels: Stories

The Wall Street Journal called it “the most innovative advertising move of the new millennium” and the ACLU described it as “possibly the worst example of corporate branding in recent memory.” Jeb Sprong, the man who invented it, just calls it his million dollar idea. “I was having sex with my prostitute, the one my firm keeps on retainer for us, when it hit me: there’s no logos to compete with here. This is open ground, uncluttered by the billboards and commercials of the outside world. In Persuasion Theory, they talk about the two ways to reach someone through advertisements: central processing and peripheral processing. Peripheral processing is easier to do, but sometimes your message can just sit in the back of someone’s mind. The direct route is hard to take, but your message sticks if it gets in there; I figured, what’s a more direct way to a businessman’s brain than through his dick, right?”

So he floated his new idea through his marketing firm, and sure enough, next time Sprong saw Tandi, there was a Nike logo tattooed on her back. “She seemed happy about it. She says she has to work half as much because she’s getting whored from two ends now, the consumer as well as the conglomerate. I think it’s better for her, really. Plus, the logo was kind of motivational for me. You know, ‘Just Do It,’ and all.”

Labels: Stories

Wesley’s older brother thought it was the funniest joke he’d ever come up with; he was probably right, if only for lack of competition. A fourteen year-old of scant cunning and intelligence, he pilfered a sweaty handful of their father’s erectile dysfunction pills, and hid them in Wesley’s oatmeal, telling him they were blueberry candies. Wesley, then eleven, made the horrendous mistake of believing his older brother when he said the candy tasted bitter because he hadn’t eaten enough of them yet.

It took about an hour and a half for any response, and Wesley’s brother had long since grown bored of the game, electing to spend the summer day at his friend’s house instead of sitting around staring at his little brother’s crotch. Wesley, an early bloomer like the majority of his family, wasn’t new to the concept of erections. They were neither foreign to him, nor the constant plague they were to his sexually frustrated brother. So, when things began to point north, he did what he usually did: went to the bathroom, pulled down his pants, and sat on the edge of the tub, contemplating it. Usually after a few minutes of staring, they’d go away: this time, he sat there and waited…and waited…and waited, and nothing happened. He flicked it. Nothing happened. He jumped up and down. It bobbed for a moment, but then settled to its original position.

Wesley sat back down, puzzled. He remembered some advice he’d overheard one of his brother’s friends imparting a few years back, about how to “take care” of it. He turned the warm water on, and grabbed the bar of soap. He held himself under the faucet, and rubbed the soap on, slow at first, then quickly. After a few minutes he rinsed himself off and put the soap back. Not a thing had changed, except now he felt a little sick to his stomach, and he had to pee.

With the gusto only a pre-pubescent child can muster, he shrugged and pulled his pants back on. The worst case of priapism in recorded medical history, Wesley has maintained his erection for a Guinness world record four and a half years. At first he was uncomfortable with it, but he quickly learned to love the fact that he never had to change clothes for gym, or go to the front of the class to write on the chalkboard. And as he grew older, he found that it acted like some kind of sexual divining rod, too, uncovering a treasure trove of the kind of high school girls his older brother had sought, but never found.

Labels: Stories

Her eyes changed color when they dried out, after she’d been reading or watching a movie; they went from their usual brown-green to an iridescent emerald. After she’d been crying, they’d be muddy, the color of mocha. Her hair changed, too. She was a brunette of the plainest variety, with limp dark hair. Except that sometimes it shimmered. Sometimes when the light hit it right, there was gold in it, waiting to be sifted out and poured all over her. And she had a plain, sad looking smile with the teeth to match. Except when she was really, really happy: then she opened her mouth and heaven spilled out. She was shy, of course, and after high school she went to college, and after college she took a tech support job she didn’t need to leave her house for. She had eye drops, so her eyes didn’t dry out, and the dingy lighting in her $500 a month studio never hit her hair just right, and there was nothing there to make her smile.

Except that sometimes, on the first day of Spring, weather-wise not calendar, she would run in the park. She’d unshutter herself and just run, tired and wild and free, sun on her face and her hair and in her lungs. And God damn, did she shine in the sun.

Labels: Stories

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it... There will be a flurry of activity to come around here after we're settled back in, but for now this is just a post to ask everyone to think good safe-flight thoughts at us tomorrow, as we're coming home! Should be back at our apartment, brain dead, by around 10 pm (knock on wood).

Labels: Generalness

You see that table next to you? Looks like there’s what, maybe a dozen Asian kids there, snapping photos of each other, right? Not so. Those are actually Glorbs, from the planet Glorb, engaged in stage two of the most elaborate mating ritual in the universe. The first stage is too horrifying to discuss, and I won’t bore you with the details of the third through sixth stages. The seventh stage, the grand finale, is terrifyingly interesting, but if a child should happen to see your screen while you were reading about it, I’d go to jail for a long long time. So, stage two: the Glorbs are photophilic, which means they love light. Except they don’t just “love” light: they love light. So when you see them like this, huddled around a camera, staring at flash after flash and giggling, try to see it for what it is: an orgy. And think twice if they ask you to take the next group photo: that might insinuate you into stage three.

Labels: Stories

He is an old, old man, with barely the strength to support his meager weight and hand out flyer after flyer on the promenade. They do not pay him very well, but he doesn’t speak the language he’d need to in order to ask for minimum wage, more than twice what he’s getting. The money could never buy him even a shithole of an apartment, so he sleeps outside, next to the flyers, spending all his money on food. He gets his pay weekly, when he’s handed the next week’s flyers. This week’s flyers are for a Chinese restaurant, though he doesn’t know that.

All he knows to do is stand there, raising his arm again and again to strangers, asking them, begging them to take one. You passed him yesterday without acknowledging him; I know this because we were walking together, and I ignored him too. I didn’t know that his wife and son had died ten years prior. I didn’t know that he’d been drifting around since then, blown by the wind like the frail thing he is. All we knew was that he was the tenth person we’d passed in the last minute and a half, and neither of us had the energy to say “No thank you” every ten seconds of our lives. Neither of us knew that “No thank you” was like a blessing to this man, who didn’t even know what it meant. What it would have meant to him was, “You are still alive. We can see you. We are here with you. It is okay.”

Labels: Stories

The light had been getting dimmer for the last month, but he'd soldiered through it. He had to. He didn't know why, but he couldn't die until today. The guards led him roughly to the gallows, were kind enough to let him step onto the platform by himself. He looked nervously at the crowd, who were drooling in anticipation. A calm came over him; it did not come over the crowd. They fitted the noose over his neck, and the executioner grabbed the creaky lever that would end his short, pathetic life. "Last words?" came the question, from under the hood.

"Please," he rasped.

Labels: Stories

“Hey bro.”

“Yo, brah.”

“What do you wanna do today?”

“I dunno, bro, I dunno.”

“Say what?”

“I’m just flippin’ your bill, bitch––let’s go freestylin’! Freestyle mania!”

* * *

What is freestylin’? It’s a lifestyle, that’s what. A freestyling kind of lifestyle. Some people mistake it for rapping without a script, but that’s whatevers. That’s just freestyling with your mouth. True freestyling is like using your entire body without a script. Like today, my buddy Bron and I went freestylin’ on the big mountain, with this girl who likes me. Don’t get me wrong, she’s aight, but my heart belongs to the style, and only the style (free).

You should have seen us! We were all over the hills, freestylin’ off-path-style. Freestylists don’t hold the handrails of life. When the sign says: stay on the trail, I say: the trail’s for the slavestylers, bruddah! In fact, a primary rule of freestylin’ is that, whenever you see a sign, you should do the opposite of what it says. No parking? Maybe I’ll park right here. Caution: wet floor? Maybe I’ll run over it as fast as I can! Freestyle mania! Nah, freestylers avoid the trail, brah. We reach for the stars and the highest handhold we can find. Yeah, the stars, bro. Real shit. That’s why I have these stars tatted on my chest. Symbolism, son.

While you’re walking the straight and narrow road of life, pay attention to what’s at the edge of your vision. That’s me. I’m jumping from tree to tree. You’re walking down the stairs: I’m sliding past you. I’m standing on the guard rail. You’re a full yard below me, and you’re lookin’ up. At me. Freestylin’.

Labels: Stories

By far the weirdest day of the year... I'm in Hawaii, where there were absolutely no gaudy displays of hollow patriotism that I saw, no jets overhead, no songs sung, and few flags waved that weren't waving yesterday, and that won't be waving tomorrow. The only sign of acknowledgment was that all the hotels flew their flags at half mast today.

What I do every year is try and remember the feeling of climbing out of the shower six years ago into a different country. I try to remember the pain, and uncertainty, and the overwhelming feeling of fear, and sympathy. I was coaching girls' soccer that year, and the parents were so afraid of something happening that we almost canceled practice that week, because we weren't sure anyone would show up.

No one should ever be made to feel that scared over an ideal. I believe a lot of things, but I never believe it's right to destroy other human beings over intangible concepts. I've hated a lot of the things that have happened in the last six years, including the squandered opportunity to be a truly united nation again, but what I hate most is that the amount of killing in the world seems to have increased. I wish that still made me mad the way it would have when I was 16, when everything made me mad, but it doesn't: it makes me so sad it's hard to move sometimes. Madrid, London, Darfur, Iraq: every day, every year, we're stacking tragedies higher and higher, and it feels like we're at the center of a lot of them.

Since 2001, I haven't been able to hate America, because I realized then that every person I've ever loved was an American. I've done very well by this country, and I've been able to witness the freedoms it affords its citizens on nearly every level during my lifetime. On "Patriot Day," if that's what we're calling it, I look over my Grunion portfolio, I remember the time I spent with young girls who were allowed to choose to play sports, and I think of the free health insurance and the financial aid I've received over the last several years, all because my family didn't have very much money. I think about my grandfather, who went from not very much to a whole lot, just because the lower class is allowed to attend college in this country.

We are the nation of George Bush, but we're also the nation of Barack Obama. We have Toby Keith, but we've got David Cross, too. Yes, Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly are still getting air time, but so are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the former of whom is allowed to say some truly vicious things about his government without fear of bodily harm.

And, every year, I watch this video. It's Jon on the first Daily Show post-9/11, putting into words what most of us wouldn't have been able to struggle through. It takes me back to that morning, and makes me remember that first week, when everything was so scary that I held onto my family and friends, and even the people I didn't like, for dear life. It was a week when, above all else, we cared about each other.

I believe that we still do. I believe this because it's true: insane conspiracy theories aside, there is an election coming up next year, and after it's over, there will be a peaceable transfer of power to the next President of the United States. Looking at the direction that our national arts have been moving, and the tenor of discussion, I'm hopeful that we're moving in the direction we've been marching in, slowly but surely, for over two hundred years: the direction of true freedom. Kurt Vonnegut called this country a grand experiment. It hasn't always succeeded, but I do feel lucky to be a part of the trying.

I got an email from Barack this morning on the subject of 9/11, and he closed it with this paragraph, which I happily quote as I trundle off to bed with my new wife:

America is bigger than the challenge that came to our shores. Let us honor the legacy of those we lost by coming together anew. Let us always mark this day by affirming that hope will triumph over fear, and that a new generation of Americans will seek a safer, freer, and more perfect union.

Labels: Generalness

Alex Hudson, that great literary master of our generation, strode into class and took his seat with a kingly, surely a masterly flourish. He looked around as if surveying his subjects and, as he turned his head away, a superior grin curled his lips. I looked at the story sitting on my desk and nearly hung my head. Surely it wasn’t good, certainly it couldn’t be as good as it would had it spilled from the hand of the illustrious Alex Hudson. I folded it in half to hide it from us both, ashamed of myself.

The class started, and Alex impressed upon us all his mastery of the English language and the literature it bore. He spoke of Modernism, spoke of naturalism, of romantic and real isms, and referred to T.S. Eliot as Thomas Stearns Eliot. He knew authors, knew their works and their lives, and he knew what they all meant. I got the feeling listening to him that he knew why the very world turned, and why we people its hills and valleys.

After class, the glorious Alex Hudson approached his friends, and asked them what they were doing that night. One was going to dinner with his family, one to the movies with his wife, and one just hanging out with some other friends.

A deflated “oh” escaped the parted lips of Alex, and a defeated look flashed across his face before he could recover. I looked into his eyes and saw no books, no knowledge, no pride. I saw someone who was alone. And as I drove home to my girlfriend, I realized something about Alex Hudson. Alex Hudson knew everything you could know about life. He had examined it, dissected it, taken it apart and studied every piece of it. But even though Alex Hudson knew everything there was to know about life, he had no idea what life is. And I don’t suppose he ever will.

Labels: Stories

and loooooooooooooooooooooving our combined life. There's a small chance I'll write a real blog about it in like two months when I'm ready to stop being this lazy. And the Niners won tonight! Life is AWESOME.

Anyway, here's what we've been up to:

Labels: Generalness

When the light went out all there was was a white door. Everything else was black. Then the siren came for him. They were across the street but I could hear them. Always. Every night when I was tucked in bed a flash of red opened my eyes, sometimes a siren, sometimes quiet. The door banged loud, and sometimes I looked out the window and saw him walk up the steps into his house. Sometimes he tripped up them. Sometimes the lights in the house went out and I could go to sleep. Happy. Sometimes the lights stayed on, and I closed my eyes, but I wouldn’t sleep. It was loud.

Sometimes there were smashes, sometimes there was screaming. That night there was smashes and screaming loud, and long, and I got scared because I was there and I could see them. I ran to Mommy and Daddy’s room. They were on the other side of the house. Away from the street. They couldn’t hear. Mommy said what’s wrong Drakie why are you crying did you have another dream.

This time I said no Mommy it’s not a dream and Daddy said what is it what is it. I ran back to my room and Mommy and Daddy came and I sat on my bed. They didn’t hear for a second and then there was a smash and a scream and Mrs. Neely crying and we could all hear it. Daddy rolled the window open and we could hear Mr. Neely yelling and Mrs. Neely crying and there were still smashes.

That was when the light went out. The streetlight in front of their house. Then it was black. Except for the white door on his car. Everything was quiet and then Mrs. Neely started screaming and Mr. Neely yelled shut up and mean words and it didn’t stop. My Mommy hugged me and my Daddy left.

Mommy hugged me warm and tight but I could still hear them Mrs. Neely was crying Mr. Neely was yelling and it wouldn’t stop and I asked mommy why she said mr neely is bad honey and i was afraid because i didnt want him to get me she said its ok honey youre safe and then daddy came back and kissed me and they hugged me and it was better. Then the sirens started and Mommy said come on Drake-Drake let’s go and I said no no please stay. He was outside my room I knew it and I didn’t want him to get me.

Mommy said okay honey okay and hugged me and Daddy sat down and he hugged me. The siren got bigger and bigger until it was everything and I couldn’t hear Mrs. Neely or Mr. Neely anymore. Then another white door and the red light again and the siren was over. Mommy said see Drakie the officer is here to take the bad man away you’re safe. The officer got out and Mrs. Neely and Mr. Neely were on the porch and Mrs. Neely was crying and Mr. Neely wasn’t.

The officer talked to them but Mr. Neely didn’t call him officer he said Frank don’t do this and the officer said Tom you need help come with me. Mr. Neely said fuck you Frank and the officer was quiet but Mrs. Neely wasn’t.

The officer put handcuffs on Mr. Neely and he didn’t look like a bad man anymore he looked sad and empty. Mrs. Neely was still crying and her arm was funny and Mommy and Daddy shut the window and said that’s enough Drake it’s time for bed now the bad man is gone. The red flash made my room bright again and Mommy and Daddy kissed me goodnight and left. I looked out the window again. The light was still off and all I could see was the white door and I was safe.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they sneeze. My grandmother, a large, bellowing woman, had large, bellowing sneezes. My mother, a meek and timid woman, with a personality ground flat by her large and bellowing mother, sneezed softly, guiltily. She married a man, my father, with the most unordinary sneezes, that started with a lot of build up, and then came out like whispers. My father was a man who was always saying goodbye.

Of course, the number of times a person sneezes in a row matters, too. One, and they’re shy, quiet. Two doesn’t tell you anything in particular, but if it’s three––watch out! More than that and you’re probably dealing with a megalomaniac. Me, I don’t sneeze––never have. Though I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what that means.

Labels: Stories

Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Pantier are buried on the hill together, side by side, man and wife. This evening it is cool in Georgia, and there’s a summer breeze gently lifting the branches of the tree that marks their graves. Their grandchildren planted that tree, taken from a cut of Mrs. Benjamin Pantier’s favorite elm. Mrs. Pantier’s favorite elm was felled by Dutch elm disease decades ago. Mr. and Mrs. Pantier’s grandchildren were felled by a flood, cancer, and old age, years and years ago. They were the last of their branch, and when little Elsa Pantier married a Bundren, the Pantier name faded first from memory, and then from existence.

The Pantiers were old blood, with roots going back to the Revolutionary War, a lineage that Mrs. Benjamin Pantier could trace, generation by generation, without looking at the family Bible, where the names were scrawled in thin, formal cursive. While her husband was guarding their home from hungry soldiers looking for food during the Civil War, his wife was guarding their memories, marshalling them like an army against the future, recording them on paper that would rot before another three winters passed.

And now the paper, the history, has blown back to the dirt, and the open arms of the trees, and the Pantiers have dissipated with it, name and family alike. The homestead has rotted, leaving nothing now but chunks of foundation, split by persistent grass with plenty of time on its hands. The markers on Mr. and Mrs. Pantier’s graves have worn as well, with no one to maintain them. There is nothing left to see, now that the sky has turned purple and the breeze is starting to feel a lot more like wind, but a tree, and a hill. And, you imagine, bones everywhere.

Labels: Stories

In just a few hours, Shar and I will be leaving the cool comfort of our apartment to journey over the Pacific Ocean to Waikiki, where we will be comfortable, and much hotter. I of course haven't slept all night as I waited until midnight to start packing/doing the District book calendar/assembling the questions for an email interview that's happening tomorrow/write my story for the day. My mom will be here in an hour, and I have to tie up a few things before then....but THEN, to Hawaii!!!!!! I'll post to let everyone know when we get there, as there should be internet in our room. Please think good thoughts at us as travel scares the shit out of me.

Also! While in Hawaii, we'll be sorting through some fun pictures, and I'll get around to finishing my Shar Party, wedding planning, Rehearsal Dinner, and other cool behind-the-scenes wedding retrospectives. Yay honeymoon!

Labels: Generalness, wedding

He’d always considered himself unique. That’s why it was such a shock when he met himself, waiting for a smoothie at the shopping center. He’d just paid the smoothie chick cashier when the smoothie chick name caller called his name, and his smoothie, and his boost. He thought, “Talk about service!” and pivoted to receive his prize. But he was intercepted, by another Percy, who had also ordered the Pomegranate Punch, who had also asked for the VitaBoost, which contained over 20 essential daily vitamins and minerals. This other Percy, Percy-Lite, was smaller, skinnier, and younger, and Percy 1.0 wondered momentarily if this was his replacement. He wondered if there was a cosmic onion of vitamin and pomegranate-loving Percys, being peeled one layer at a time.

He thought about asking this Percy-Lite when his birthday was, thought about just explaining the situation to him. He tried to figure out a way he could do that without embarrassing himself horrendously. Percy 1.0 sized up his doppleganger, trying to determine if he was attractive or not. “Maybe,” he thought, “the idea of finding our opposite to fall in love with is absolutely ludicrous. Maybe our soulmates are exactly like us. Maybe they wear our name, and drink our smoothies, and maybe they’d understand everything we had to say to them before we could even say the words.” On his way out of the store, Percy-Lite had noticed him staring, and he looked away quickly. Once the doppleganger had left the store, he got back in line. It was all a little much for him. He needed a shot of wheatgrass.

Labels: Stories

“There was a time, son, when people didn’t care about anything. Every summer it got a little hotter, until eventually even healthy middle-aged people were dropping dead in their high rises, and still nobody said anything. They didn’t know what to say, so how could they? Their leaders would do things they hated, and the weather got hotter and hotter, and the music on their radios and the movies in their theaters got worse by the year, but no one did anything about it. They just kept going to the same places, handing money to the same cashiers, waiting for something to change.

“I know it’s scary, but take heart son, be glad things aren’t like that now. Otherwise, can you imagine? We’d all be in line for National Treasure 7 while the pavement melted underneath us, trying to pretend we didn’t hear the fighter jets screaming overhead.”

Labels: Stories

She was smart, smarter than anyone in her class, and usually smarter than her teachers, too. She was funny, the kind of child who can make other children, their parents, and their grandparents laugh. She was beautiful, with a smile that was as infectious as her bubbling laughter. She was rare. Rarer still, she was down to earth, and never held her un-earned gifts over her classmates. Still, they resented her, and searched for something to level the playing field. What they found, without much searching, was the mole in the exact middle of her forehead; in their eyes, it was a beacon calling out for mockery, begging for their derision.

So they mocked and derided it, and her, and within minutes, all her intelligence and charm and wit didn’t matter, not to her, and not to them. Every day she’d run home from elementary school in tears, into the arms of her mother, who cried with her. She cried because her daughter was almost what she wanted her to be. She was almost perfect. So she made an appointment with a hairy man in a white coat, a man who said he could remove the imperfection from her otherwise perfect face. It only took thirty minutes, and when it was over, her mother and the man in the white coat clapped and clapped and clapped. The little girl was perfect.

Except that she missed it. The kids had made fun of it, and her mother had ignored it, and she’d been ashamed of it, but that mole had been her very favorite mole, and she missed it. And every afternoon, after she’d walked home confidently from the school where she was accepted and adored, she’d sneak upstairs, and stare at her new face in the mirror, stare at the pale spot where there should have been a dark spot, and squint. Then she’d take out a brown marker, and she’d make a little dot, just a speck, where the imperfection had been. And she’d smile. “Perfect,” she’d whisper, to no one but herself.

Labels: Stories

Yes, I know you already know about them. These are our new iPod overlords:



Obviously, the iPod touch is getting all the attention, but I'm pretty underwhelmed by that: it only comes in 8 or 16 gigabytes, with a hefty price tag. The 16 gig will set you back four hundred dollars; four hundred bucks for an iPod that won't hold a fourth of what I have on my current one. I know, it'll be better to watch movies on, but it still won't hold very many of them, and as great as the internet capability is, it's not worth the price tag. It is a step in a monumentally right direction, and I'd assume that by the second gen, they'll have the memory capacity up to at least 20 gig, which, due to how rad their current line is, has become a minimum requirement.

What has me super excited though, is the iPod Classic, which will be coming with up to 160 GIGABYTES OF MEMORY!!!!!!! That means I could store everything I've ever written, everything on my current iPod, and still have like 60 gigs of extra memory. Plus it comes with a brand new search feature that will cut down on scroll time.

Labels: Generalness

All day long the fifth graders snickered. He had been expecting it, Pudge had. No one else had come to school dressed prepared for the race that afternoon. The boys in his class had brought Reebok duffel bags with, if they were lucky, running shoes tied at the strings, dangling down and smacking against each other with clip-clopping gusto. When the bell signaled the end of school, the fifth grade boys would run to the bathrooms to change, yelling and boasting and laughing. Not Pudge. Pudge was dressed in his dad’s ankle socks, the heels puckering out a quarter of the way up his calf. Pudge was wearing a black sweat band and scuffed gray tennis shoes. His brother’s three-year-old Mini Marathon shirt was stretched tightly across Pudge’s chest, barely covering the waistband of his cut-off sweat pants. Pudge was ready. And all day long the fifth graders snickered because all they saw when they looked at Pudge was a very pink, very round eleven-year-old in hand-me-downs. They joked that when the whistle blew he would fall on his face and roll. They said that by the time he rounded the track it would be dark, everyone will have gone home, and his mother would be so embarrassed she would leave him behind to cry and cry on the deserted playground.

They were wrong.

When the whistle blew, Pudge set off, fleshy legs pounding the concrete, blotchy, pink breasts flapping with a clip-clop of their own. Parents and friends stopped cheering in the crowd, stopped talking and just watched. No one had ever seen anything like it. Pudge was moving faster than any fifth grader had moved before. His gasps for breath echoed in the ears of the boys who followed him, ten seconds in and already half the track behind. When the sweat band got too heavy, Pudge stripped it off. By the time the kid behind him reached it, it was already dry. When his shirt was sopping wet, he took that off too, never missing a stride as he flung it to the wind. And still he ran, faster and faster. And when he reached the finish line, they rushed to speak to him, adults and children too, but Pudge didn’t stop running. He ran and he ran until they couldn’t hear the clip-clopping, until he was just a very pink, very round speck on the horizon. And, when they were sure he wouldn’t be coming back, they looked at one another and shook their heads. When the second-place boy came in twenty-two minutes later, they gave him the gift certificate for Pizza Palace and a hearty pat on the back. No one said anything about Pudge, except for Ms. Kasner, the science teacher. As the last child rounded the corner to the finish line, she smiled and was heard to say: “Weight is just a measure of the pull of gravity, that’s all. Doesn’t mean anything when a boy is born to fly.”

Labels: Stories

Holy. Shit. It's. Hot. I know I'm not the first person to notice or bitch about it, but can I just say how happy I am to be lying around in our apartment all week? During the one time we've been outside since the wedding (yes, that is one time in four days), we felt so absolutely cooked that we agreed to go outside nevermore. Until the honeymoon. When we go to Hawaii. Where it's hotter....

Anyway, in addition to tons of reading (Shar is plowing through one Harry Potter book a day and I'm tearing up the Earth/Universe/Paradise X trilogy, the densest reading this side of Faulkner and Ulysses), and some DVDs (re-watching Sports Night!), we've been sorting through pictures. Here is what I remember, from mental and photographic recollections, of my bachelor party:

To set the scene, this is the Saturday before my wedding. I've been working nonstop on tying up writing junk for the next three weeks, and on putting the last pieces of the wedding together. So to have one day, where all I had to do was show up at Pat and Dan's place at a certain time was pretty much exactly what I needed, a day hanging out with friends and doing no planning or writing.

I was the first to show up, and I watched Ninja Warrior with Dan and Pat until some other folk showed up, and then we went disc golfing, where Beef lost Brian's disc, we all got hotter than hell, and my brother called to tell me he wouldn't be able to make it down from Berkeley. I'd never disced at the Huntington course before, and I was pretty impressed by it: there are less trees than at El Dorado, and a shitload more hills. It also cost two buck, which wasn't a problem at my party, but would definitely keep me from playing there regularly. Rad course though, all in all.

Discing!



After we were done discing we hit Dairy Queen where I got my favorite food in probably the entire universe: chocolate ice cream dipped in a chocolate shell. Then we went back to Pat and Dan's to wait for the rest of our non-discing friends to arrive, while we played Mario Strikers and (in my case) napped, trying to catch up on some much-needed sleep. Mid-game, my little brother showed up with a shit-eating grin that can only be described as impressive, even for a Guardabascio. For the second time in his life, Matt tricked me; in this case, it was totally okay.

So around four, my co-best man Ryan showed up, along with a fucking stretch Hummer limousine! I'd never been in a vehicle bigger than a van before, and had honestly never thought I'd ride in a limousine, so this was a pretty insane moment for me. I was gripped with panic at one point, however, when I realized that like 4/5 of all the people I cared about in the world were on the same four wheels.

Fortunately, we didn't crash, and instead made it to Dave and Buster's, which I'd never been to but is more or less a grown-up Chuck E. Cheese's, in that it has both a bar and an incredible arcade. Ryan had arranged for us to have a little area set aside, with shitloads of food, two pool tables, a shuffleboard, and two televisions to watch football on. We snacked for a while, then the Chargers game came on, and a bunch of people ran off to play video games while the men's men stayed to watch.

Men's Men! (And yes, that is a beer-soaked cigarette in Kobane's mouth)


The Chargers ended up winning, thank God. Oh, and a note on the food: Dave and Buster's has unbelievable food. I particularly recommend their sliders, which are tiny burgers on hawaiian sweet bread. Ryan had them brought to us plain, since he knows I like my burgers plain (Ryan is easily the second-best wife I could have in the world behind Shar), and everyone had somewhere around a dozen (somewhere north of that in a few cases). To the man, everyone was totally ruined by them the next day, and I can't think of a worse case of diarrhea I've ever had. Still, every single guy there seemed like they would have been stoked to eat them again on Sunday.

After the football game, we opened up the shuffleboard table, which certainly made things more...interesting. I'd never played before, and ended up having a blast, even if I did suck (which I did). Plus, it's always fun to see some of your friends take money off of your other friends.

The Board!


It was while we were shuffling that an old coked-up alcoholic (definitely last stages style) decided it would be a good idea to pick a fight with 18 young men, and got hisself thrown out of the bar, screaming that he could "buy this place" the whole way.

There are of course a gabillion other stories from Dave and Bustie's, including me and Dan attempting to make a freak baby in one of those "combine your photo" machines, and getting a stock photo instead (shenanigans!), but I have neither the time nor the energy to rewrite all of them. Needless to say, we had an amazing time, and then around 11 or so we all piled back in to the limousine (!!!), with me now wearing a bright pink D&B's shirt that Eli won/stole me (you never can tell with that Eli Bates).

On sitting down in the limo, two things immediately struck me: 1.) J.J. Fiddler is across from the radio, and 2.) I'm sitting next to Miles Lemaire. Predictably, J put on some absolutely horrible slow jams and predictably, Miles convinced an entire limo of my friends to attempt to tickle me to death. In the ensuing panic, I kicked Pat in the knee so hard my shoe came off, and I'm pretty sure Brian will never have children now. I'm relatively sure I've never laughed so hard for so long in my entire life. By the time we got back to Pat and Dan's, I was utterly exhausted, my face soaked in tears, and my sides hurt, both from too much laughing and too much sliders.

Slow Jamming in the Limo



Back at the house, we posed for a group photo, and then were immediately beset by Huntington Police, who demanded that we break up our (mostly) sober picture-taking.

The Riot!


After that we retreated inside, where most collapsed on couches and floors, a few mysteriously disappeared upstairs, and I slipped outside to talk to my bride-to-be and attempt to sweat out some sliders. After a few more photos, it was time to head home. On the ride home, it kind of hit me how strange it is to be getting so much older, so fast. It wasn't necessarily the wedding that spurred on that thought, though that was a big part of it, but the fact that everyone at the party now looked significantly older than when I'd first met them. I knew I was the one getting the ring on my finger at the end of the week, but we were all undeniably getting older. And that's fucking weird as hell.

Still, I got back safe and sound, despite a gnarly wreck that happened right in front of me, and retired with my lady for a long, restful sleep, before waking up to the second day of the longest week of my life. But more on that later. For now, more Sports Night, and then sleeeeeeeep.

The Bestest of Best Men

Labels: Generalness, wedding

“You want a story? Well, you know me, life’s been squeezing me dry since the moment my pop popped me into my mama’s shriveled belly…but I do have one great story. In all my dirty, long life, I can say that I had one perfect week…reckon that’s more than most get.

“’N I was 24, I had happened on a little money, for the first time in my life. They called it an inheritance, but it wasn’t: it was blood money. And I didn’t want that money any more than I’d wanted my ma while she was still around, so I made a decision to spend every last dirty penny, spendin’ it on what little love I could gather. So’s I asked out Mary Tyler, the most beautiful girl in all ‘Bama. I told her I’d never be able to give her what she deserved, but I promised her I could give her one week. One week of anything her heart wished for. And she said yes, though she never told her pop.

“She snuck out and we went to the city, stayed at a hotel twice as tall as any building in the town we hailed from, stayed on the very top floor, where we could see everything. We walked around, and she’d notice a dress here, a necklace there. Every day when we got home, it would all be waiting for her, wrapped up as pretty as could be. We went to the theater, we went to the opera, we went to see the orchestra and the basketball team, too. And when we didn’t feel like walking, we took a limo.

“The last night we was out there, she looked at me, and started crying. I asked her what was the matter and she said, ‘This has been the best week of my life. But I know I gotta be dirty with you now.’ And even though my body was screamin’ at me, I just stroked her hair and kissed her forehead and said, ‘Mary baby, don’t you worry. You’re perfect. You’re too perfect for that, and you’re too perfect for me. If you’ll just let me lay here next to you and breathe you in for just one night, that’ll be enough.’ And she did. And it was, enough for all these years. True perfection’ll last longer than most men realize. And that week’s lasted me my whole life.”

Labels: Stories

Hey friends and family; while you're waiting for me/us to sort through photos from the last few weeks and post them, I thought you might enjoy this link to an article I published in last week's District. It's a store profile of a textbook store in LB for their back-to-school issue that I took on because they offered me some money I needed, and because it had a 48-hour turnaround time. It also marks the least editing a piece of mine has gone through before seeing print there, something I've always used as a barometer for how well I'm fitting in with a publication's style. Fun!

Labels: Generalness

The boy was walking home from the bus stop the first time he saw her. He was certainly a boy, though he fancied himself a man, emboldened by hardships both real and imagined. She was climbing into her station wagon, pulling up her flowery skirt to avoid getting tangled, and exposing just a little more tanned and toned leg than he had expected to see. His heart began to pound as he watched her adjust herself in the rearview mirror, carefully pulling silky hair out of her eyes and checking her lipstick before putting her car in gear. A leer spread over his mouth, one he’d practiced in front of the bathroom mirror as he stood examining his small crop of chest hairs and imagining Lauren Thomas, the beautiful 10th grader, running her hands over his broadening shoulders. He knew that the Older Woman backing out of her driveway in front of him could change his life if he could just show her how mature he was, how much he understood her world, and how much he belonged in it.

She pulled languidly out into the street and had begun to move smoothly away from the fourteen-year-old watching her from the street corner when she caught his eye in her mirror. His skin felt raw and his ribs tried their best to crush his lungs as she smiled at him. He drew himself up to his full height and smiled back. This is the moment. This is when you become the stuff of legends, he thought. Tomorrow you will walk by this house and she will be waiting for you. She will offer you wine, and you will quote poetry and then you will retire to the bedroom. His chest hairs were prickling. His smile turned back into his manly leer.

She stopped the station wagon. She got out, one perfectly sculpted leg and then another swiveling to support the utterly curvaceous woman who turned to look at him, placing one hand on her full hips and using the other to show the teenaged boy in front of her just how easy it would be for him to run his hands through her hair. “Hi,” she purred, licking her lips.

And she probably would have said something more, but he was already gone, running as fast as he could towards home, his own bed, and a yearbook picture of Lauren Thomas.

Labels: Stories

So this time last week, I was recovering from an exhausting and wonderful bachelor party, and beginning the rush planning of Shar Party. We were both running on fumes, with the longest week of our lives in front of us.

Today? We took our first trip outside of our apartment since Friday night, a quick smoothie run, then immediately scampered back indoors, where we are surrounded by wedding presents and their wrappings. We are happy, and tired, but really really really great.

Over the next five days, I'm going to give each of the big events of last week their own blog post complete with pictures, so the blogosphere can relive everything that happened. I'll also continue to post a story a day, though these will undoubtedly be at random times for a few weeks, so bear with me. Then, on Friday, we're off to Hawaii for the homeynoon. Jawesome.

Labels: Generalness, wedding

I’ve never seen any grass look this green, he thought. It looks wet, and fresh, but it’s two in the afternoon. He looked at his wife, lying next to him on the blanket, the small picnic basket behind her, the library books they had just checked out stacked on top of it. She was looking at him, and smiling, and her eyes were green, too. He leaned in and kissed her softly, then rolled onto his back.

Their children, both very young, were running down the slight hill towards the duck pond, playing tag and laughing. They had left their bikes resting at the top of the hill, next to their parents’. They each had a piece of bread clutched tightly in their little hands; they were going to feed the bread to the ducks. “Zack!” The woman on the blanket called. “Sarah! Don’t push each other next to the water!”

The children kept laughing and running around the little lake, their reflections mimicking them on the water’s surface, ripples running across them as the ducks paddled back and forth lazily, waiting for their meal. The mother and father on the blanket rolled into each other’s arms, feeling the warmth of the summer sun on their backs and the warmth of their bodies pressed up against each other. They kissed again, longer this time, breathing together, and the world became slow motion and blurry on the warm island of the blanket.

They pulled their heads back and looked at each other, comfortable with the knowledge that they were both thinking the same thought: “This moment will last forever, no matter what.” And they were comfortable with the knowledge that they were right. A bird flapped loudly overhead, once, twice, and the woman dropped onto her back, while the man propped himself up to watch their children play.

She lay on her back, thinking, It will all be all right. This is perfection that can last. She was thinking that it didn’t matter that her husband insisted on bringing a bottle of wine on this bike ride, and it didn’t matter that he’d open it soon. She looked at him, and her children, and then at the sky that was so blue. And she looked down and thought, My God, the grass is beautiful. Like a field of living emeralds, rolled out over black paper. But it was soft, too. She kissed her husband’s elbow and closed her eyes.

Labels: Stories

So the wedding was yesterday, and it was perfect. There are a thousand things to write about, and literally more than a thousand photos to look at, but I'll post more about the event (and the events leading up to it) over the next few weeks. If you attended the wedding, you probably went home with a pair of CDs, filled with music that Shar and I have played each other over the years; my lovely wife suggested we post the stories behind each song on our blogs. So, here goes! A Shar and Mike playlistravaganza!

1. The Letter- The Box Tops
In the first three years of our relationship, I was making an average of three round trips to UCLA every week. For three years. Seriously. So, given that the scenery on the 405 doesn't change much, I had to come up with something to keep me from getting horrendously bored (especially because I came from class and often sat in that awful 405 traffic)...this song was the best thing I came up with. Serves as a great reminder of how worth it the commute is.

2. Brown Eyed Girl- Van Morrison
Yeah yeah yeah, this one is kind of a gimme: I mean, Shar has brown eyes and all. But there are a few other parallels we like: there's a reference to "Tuesday and so slow," which always gets me since, coincidentally, that was always the day we spent together in the months before we started going out (when I was laid up from an ankle surgery and Shar came to push me around in a wheelchair) and in the weeks after.

3. God Only Knows- The Beach Boys
There's not an amazing contextual story for this song: it's just perfect, and reminds me of that moment, one I think most couple have somewhere around that two years together mark, where you realize you no long have any idea of who you'd be without this other, wonderful person.

4. Do You Realize??- The Flaming Lips
This kind of became my anthem for wedding planning. Pieces of it are a little morbid (do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?), but that was kind of the point. Shar and I went into our marriage with our eyes open: the wedding was in part a wish, a hope that after our lives end, we'll get to go on somewhere together. I've never believed in an afterlife, but the last five years with Shar have made me hope for one.

5. I've Been Waiting for You- Neil Young
So, kind of embarrassing: I asked Shar out about a thousand times before she finally said yes. I had a crush on her in high school (who wouldn't?), but she wisely didn't want to be more than friends yet. Finally, when we started going out the summer after we graduated, we had a solid three year friendship as our foundation, a friendship that had gradually grown stronger and stronger over several years.

6. Angel, Won't You Call Me?- The Decemberists
Well, won't you? Anyone who's ever been in a long distance relationship, where the very act of basic communication depends on a phone call or email, will understand why this song is on the CD. Plus, we love the Decemberists!

7. If I Were a Carpenter- Johnny and June Carter Cash
This is a goofy song we both like. I go on dino digs with my uncle in the summertime, and end up spending two weeks missing Shar as well as having lots of fun. Two years ago my iPod and I got on a huge Johnny Cash kick, and this song always made me smile and think of home, not longingly, but goofily and happily.

8. You Can't Fail Me Now- Loudon Wainwright III
A very recent favorite, from the Knocked Up soundtrack. What a song! So many perfect lines: "Trust me mercy's just a warning shot across the bow" is a beautiful way of talking about the limits of patience in trying times, and the "You bite my tongue" statement has always been true of Shar and me. She's always been wonderful about letting me know when it's time to stop trying to say sweet things, and time to start acting on them. And "You know all my secret heart avows," and...really, I love this song. Perfect for when you feel like your relationship is soaring over all questions and doubts.

9. I Was Made to Love Her- Stevie Wonder
I was, I was! There's a lot of great love songs, but I don't know that any of them captures the feeling of being in love better than this one. The triumphant, flighty feeling of knowing that someone loves you, no matter what you've been through, no matter who or what forces stand against you, is the most powerful feeling in the world.

10. Maps- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
A little bit of the long distance blues, as my steam for driving 200 miles a week started running out, and I started to find a life at CSULB, thirty miles away from Shar. We wanted to make sure we stayed strong for each other, but we both knew we had things to do in other cities. This was a reminder to both of us that our love pretty much smashes everything else, at the end of the day.

11. Can't Take My Eyes Off of You- Frankie Valli
This was on the first mix I made Shar, and we still love doing stupid dances to each other. Don't tell Shar I told you all, but she recorded a cover of this song for me, complete with a capella trumpet solo. I'm an awful lucky fella, I know.

12. Happiness Writes White- Harvey Danger
This song has become one of our absolute favorites over the last year and a half. It's all about trying to deal with loving someone and trying to live a 9 to 5 life at the same time, when you never quite feel like you have enough time together. From the long distance at our beginning to the Borders day jobs and late night deadline rushes in recent days, we never feel like we see each other enough (hence the importance of a weekly date night). It also deals with something I've been dealing with from the beginning: how the heck am I supposed to write about how much I love Shar, when it's by definition so indescribable?

13. Harvest Moon- Neil Young
Following in my father's footsteps, I'm a huge Neil Young fan: I've always loved dancing to this song. It's one of our Toe Songs, which are songs Shar stands on my toes for. Fortunately, she's very tiny.

14. Every Little Thing She Does is Magic- The Police
One of my favorite games to play is "How fast can I get a song stuck in Shar's head?" This song is kind of a cheater move, as it usually only takes two notes of the chorus to have her singing it for the rest of the day. And when Shar's singing, everyone's a winner.

15. L.O.V.E.- Nat King Cole
I mentioned earlier that I had a crush on Shar in high school. My two best friends would always sing this song, often quite loudly, whenever we'd go over to talk to her at lunchtime (which, at my insistence, was daily). It was quite a happy thing to put it on a mix for Shar after we were going out, and laugh about it with her.

16. Unchained Melody- The Righteous Brothers
The Righteous Brothers are probably as responsible for our relationship existing as I am. If you've never listened to this song while spending some time with a person you're madly in love with, you probably aren't living properly. And again, it has that wonderful triumphant feel to it.

17. Into My Arms- Nick Cave
This song has a lot of fancy imagery and lyricism (Nick Cave is awesome!), but at its core, it's about compromise. It's a compromise we've had to make, too: Shar grew up attending church weekly, and I grew up an atheist with very little patience for organized religion. In high school, I pointed out to a man handing out Bibles and telling my friends and I that we were going to hell that by encroaching on public school property, he was breaking the law. He shoved me, so I punched him in the jaw. You can imagine then that it was rather odd to start dating a girl who, though not a rabid believer by any means, still loved going to church. This songs makes me think happily of the times I've spent with Shar there, of the time I spent reading the Bible, trying to further expand our shared knowledge and interests, and, now, of my wedding ceremony. I think a good litmus test of how much you love someone is how much you're willing to compromise for them; a better test of the health of your relationship is how much you can compromise without changing who you are. "But I believe in love...and I know that you do too. And I believe in some kind of path, that we can walk down me and you."

18. Of Angels and Angles- The Decemberists
"There are angles, in your angles, there's a low moon caught in your tangles..." What a beautiful way to open a song. This song just feels right to me, in every way. Just a few seconds of it instantly transports me to lazy weekend afternoons spent in bed, reading and waiting for the sun to set, just to see each other in different lighting.

19. Dreams- The Cranberries
This song means a lot to me because of good timing. I had my iPod on shuffle, and as I was pulling into a UCLA parking lot, wondering how the hell I went from a Long Beach hoodlum with no money in my pocket to visiting my beautiful girlfriend at UCLA, this song came on, and the opening lines about how much life can change when you're with someone totally floored me.

20. I've Just Seen a Face- The Beatles
Another song that makes me feel like its writers have actually been in love: it just moves perfectly, and makes my heart beat the way it did the first time Shar came over to see me not as my friend, but as my girlfriend, way back on August 24th, 2002.

21. Uptight (Everything's Alright)- Stevie Wonder
Okay so I love Stevie Wonder. Who doesn't? This is a good song to play when something has me upset, and I feel like I need to reorder my priorities, and remember how lucky I am.

22. Don't Dream It's Over- Julian Davies
This song isn't actually amazing, but the performance is. Julian Davies is a street musician in London, and he entertained us when Shar and I were in England, for my first time out of the country and our first vacation together. Every time I hear this song, I'm flooded with memories of that wonderful trip, and I just want to grab Shar, head to LAX, and get on standby for a flight to anywhere.

23. The Luckiest- Ben Folds
I think somewhere around three weeks after we started going out, Shar played this song for me. We've listened to it literally hundreds of times since, usually dancing, sometimes just holding each other, but always smiling and often crying. I've never heard a more beautiful or heartfelt love song in my life. It's a song written by a man who has tried and failed, and has finally found something that's just absolutely right on every level. I don't know anyone who can't relate to the beauty of that. Every mix we've ever made each other has ended with this song, as has every year we've spent together. It was the first dance we danced at our wedding (the way we always do, with Shar on my feet holding on for dear life), and it's just flat out our favorite, in every way.

Labels: Generalness, wedding